Modern Wisdom - #726 - Shawn Stevenson - How To Hack Your Sleep With These Habits

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Shawn Stevenson is an American nutritionist, bestselling author, and podcaster. You spend more time asleep than any other activity, and yet no one teaches you how to do it properly. Thankfully there are some simple routines, hacks, foods and habits you can implement to improve your sleep and longevity immediately. Expect to learn if poor circadian rhythm is responsible for the modern mental health crisis, the most important habits to improve your sleep routine, how to get the best sleep of your life, the number one determining factor of how to live longer, how to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer, the best foods for sleep, the healthiest ways you should be storing your food and much more… Sponsors: Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Join Gymshark66 at gym.sh/modernwisdom66 Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Sean Stevenson. He's an American nutritionist, best-selling author, and a podcaster. You spend more time asleep than any other activity, and yet no one teaches you how to do it properly. Thankfully, there are some simple routines, hacks, foods, and habits that you can implement to improve your sleep and longevity immediately. Expect to learn if poor circadian rhythm is responsible for the modern mental health crises, the most important habits to improve your sleep routine, how to get the best sleep of your life, the number one determining factor of how to live longer, how to fall asleep quicker, and stay asleep longer, the best foods for sleep, the healthiest ways that you should be storing your

food, and much more. Do you want to change your life this year alongside thousands of others all doing the same? Well, Gymshark 66 might help you do just that. Over 66 days, Gymshark 66 challenges you to focus on small wins every day to help form life-changing habits. All that you need to do is download the free Gymshark training app right now on Android or iOS and choose your three habits. Then, start taking them off every day and track your progress. Why 66?

Well, research shows that it takes 66 days on average to form a habit and forming new, healthy habits can truly change your life. So get involved by using my link, gym.sh slash modern wisdom 6.6 or search Gymshark training in the app store. That's gym.sh slash modern wisdom six six or type gym shark training in the app store. This episode is brought to you by Woop. I've won Woop for over four years now since way before they were a partner on the show and it is the only wearable I have ever stuck with because it's the best. It is so innocuous. You do not remember that you've got it on. And yet, it tracks absolutely everything. 24-7, via something from your wrist. It tracks your heart rate, it tracks your sleep, your recovery, all of your workouts, your

resting heart rate, your heart rate variability. How much you're breathing throughout the night. It puts all of this into an app and spits out very simple, easy to understand and fantastically usable data. It's phenomenal. I am a massive, massive fan of Woop. And that is why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. You can join for free, pay nothing for the brand new Woop 4.0 strap plus you get your first

month for free and there's a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free, and if you do not like it after 29 days, they will give you your money back. Head to join.woop.com slash modernwisterm. That's join.woop.com slash modernwisterm. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Sean Stevenson. I mean, I've been given and mentioned in an interview that I did with him recently, that the potential mental health epidemic that was seeing at the moment could be downstream of post-accadian rhythm, dysregulated sleep, disrupted sleep. How much truth do you think's in that? Oh, circadian medicine is really top tier science right now. We're synced up with the 24-hour solar day.

All of our hormone production, our neurotransmitters, we're synced up with what the universe is doing. And the funny thing is humans can kind of hide out from that, that interface, but our genes are really expecting us to be in constant communication with what's happening outside. And humans are really interesting. We can create our own habitats. We're kind of like big, hairless beavers or many of us are hairless. But even when we're creating, it's still nature, because we're a part of nature. But we can essentially hide out and create a 24 hour day, artificially. And so our circadian timing system is getting really screwed up. So absolutely, I

agree with him. And here's the rub. Right now in the United States estimated about 115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived to boot out of 330. Yeah, so a sizable amount. We're talking about on a regular basis, like essentially daily. And my big thing is always looking for what is the connective tissue? Why should people really care about this? And I always like to tie to metabolic health and how we look, right? And a really fascinating study was done. This was actually published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

And they looked at people's biometrics and UCT scans to look at their belly fat for five years, tracking a group of people. And they found that people who were sleep deprived gained over twice as much belly fat in that five-year period. And sleep deprived in this particular study was less than six hours a night. So there's something about six as being that sweet spot. And by the way, there is no cookie cutter amount of sleep. That's one of those things that we just know, we just kind of drink eight glasses of eight hours water a day, like it's very superficial. Is that the same for Shaq?

And for Simone Biles, it's going to be different. And the same thing holds true with sleep. It's not just the number of hours is the quality of those hours. It's a lot like the calorie conversation, you know, yes, calories matter, but the quality of those calories definitely matter. And I've been a big proponent in pushing into pop of their culture, this term epi-caloric controller recently, which we can circle back to and talk about.

But in particular with sleep, I wanna share one of the piece too, because especially right now in this energy equation and how important this is, and some of your friends and colleagues as well, like Dr. Gabriel Lyon, really good friend of mine, we're looking at how important this is and some of your friends and colleagues as well like Dr. Gabriel Lion, really good friend of mine. We're looking at how important testosterone is, not just for maintaining our muscle mass and our energy but for longevity.

And this is critical for men and women as finally really shifting gears to be all encompassing of humanity how important testosterone is. Now listen to this. This was published in 2011 in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, top tier medical journal here in the United States. And they tracked a young men average age about 24, all right. And they brought them into the lab

and they put them in its award study. So they sleep deprived them for just one week, all right. So they basically got five hours of sleep for one week. That one week period, their testosterone dropped 15%. All right, now that might not sound like a lot, but suddenly, that's as if they're 10 to 15 years older as far as their testosterone production is concerned. This is the power of sleep.

Testosterone is right next to HGH, our most sleep duration dependent hormones, kind of like you're a human Tesla jacking into your charging station at night and filling up the testosterone. There are things we can get little spikes during the day, but basically when we get up testosterone is just going down. And when we go to sleep, it starts rising again. So if you are not performing in the bedroom or in the gym in the way that you want, it might be because of how much sleep you're getting on a nighttime. Absolutely. And it's always the first thing to go, unfortunately, you know, and it's just part of our culture. But fortunately, things are changing, you know, this has

become a big part of our popular conversation, especially in health circles. And it tends to trickle its way out to the larger culture escape eventually. But, you know, my first book came out in 2015, I believe. And it was the first sleep wellness-related book to become an international bestseller. It had never been done before. It's just like the public wasn't necessarily interested in that topic. But I argue against that. It wasn't that we're not interested in it.

We didn't know how much it mattered. It wasn't framed in a way that made sense. That's my story going to a conventional university and having biology and having kinesiology and nutritional science, but really not understanding how that is applicable to me as a human being. When we're in biology and we're looking at the human cell, my professor did not know nor had they made that revelation, nor did any of the students that as we're looking at the mitochondria, that mitochondria is made from our meals.

As we're looking at the cell nucleus that's made from the nutrients that we eat, as we're looking at the cell membrane that's made from our menu. All of the things we're looking at is made from food. And that interface between our diet, our sleep, our movement, all of these things are impacting the cells that we're actually building right down to the level of the genes. And for probably about 10 years now, I've been really keeping my finger on the pulse of something called Nutra Genetics and Nutrogenomics. So these are fields of science looking at how our nutrition is impacting our genetic expression. And one of my mentors, incredible, incredible thinker, pioneering epigenetics, Dr. Bruce Lipton. He's a cell biologist, and he really impressed

that the term epigenetics into popular culture, he's the guy. And one of our early conversations, he was sharing with me that, you know, when they did the human genome project, we just knew there was gonna be like a million different genes for humans, right? Because there's bananas that have more genes than us.

There's corn that has more genes than us. There's corn that has more genes than us. They found about 25,000 genes. And the question was, how are we so diverse? How do we look so different? How are personalities so different? Are different levels of health and functionality? All these different things. What's so remarkable about us, that he highlighted for me is that with one epigenetic influence, like a bite of food, it can change a genes because in school we were taught DNA to RNA to protein. So eventually we're printing out proteins. One bite of food can change what proteins are getting printed out to the variety of about 3,000 different options of what type of proteins are getting printed.

So basically copies of you that are getting printed out. It's 3,000 options with one gene. So that's the power of food, it's the power of sleep. These are the top two things that pay attention to, but we tend to run out and we get that new supplement. Let me get that, you know, whatever. We're looking for all these external inputs, but truly, for my money, I'm putting it on, optimizing your sleep first

in foremost, and then let's work on the other stuff so you can be a badass while you're awake. Yeah, the performance in hand so that you're looking for is not in a supplement store, but it's your bedtime and your wake time. What is it that's causing this mass dysregulation? Like I can throw bro science out there and guess what I think is going on, but is there any longitudinal research looking at the average amount of time that people used to spend the sleep do now, quality of sleep, micro awakenings, RAM, deep, etc.

What are we looking at kind of a cross time with regards to sleep over the last 50 years? Oh, such a good question. So as you know, things have changed dramatically in the last about 50 years. And one thing to kind of transition into that, and part of the reason that my first book Sleep Smarter was so successful is that I understood the missing link between all this incredible insight and all the science we've gained the past 50 years and making it applicable for people, which is we need to make this simple because it is. And so coming from a conventional education, I started off my career. I've been in the field for 21 years now, speaking in the language of academia, and a little not so fun fact is that it takes upwards of about 15 years for us to have like a

gold standard, randomized placebo control, double blind study, all the things, it might affirm, you know, what we're talking about today with improving your sleep quality before it gets like put into conventional education, all right? It's a huge lag, and this is in the age of the internet, all right? It doesn't make any sense.

And so what I did was, because of working with people, which is very different than just, again, working from theory, which that can be true, but it's different when you sit face to face with somebody and they're depending on you to help them to get where they want to be. And I knew this really interesting secret about humans, which is we want change, we want change,

we want the results, but we don't want to change much to get it. And, okay, I'm gonna say that again, we want change, but we don't want to change that much. We might not be happy with where we are, who we are, but we're comfortable with that. And so changing too much at once creates so much turbulence. And so we really, what we would ideally want is take who we are now and give us the

new body. Take this person, give me the money, right? I don't have to qualify myself to have it. And so knowing that this is the case, I started looking for what are the lowest hanging fruits. What are the things people can do to optimize our sleep quality without having to turn their life upside down? So I was looking for things that were science-backed but very simple. Now saying all this to transition this into this question, in the last 50 years, we've

seen the onset of hustle culture. There's always throughout humanity, there's always been a certain guild of people who are called Burning the Midnight Oil and looking out and, you know, standing guard for our tribe and whatnot. But that's a small sect of humans. For the most part, nighttime danger.

We don't see like other animals do. Like that lion can see you at night. You can't necessarily see it. We're not really hardwired for nocturnal activity. With that being the case, optimizing what we're doing during the day is going to help us to actually sleep better at night. And that's really the key. So one of my tenants is that a good night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning. And understanding we've kind of devolved from our state of seeking shelter, seeking comfort at night in a safe place, and waiting for the sunrise, basically so that things are safer. Now we've created this situation where we can basically, like I mentioned earlier,

created 24-hour artificial day and we can just be up whenever. So this is a new opportunity for us as people. Yes, there were people back in the day that they had a lot of candles, you know, but it's still very different. We evolved even with fire for quite some time. And that candlelight, here's a really interesting study. And this also points to like one of the things that we can do to improve our sleep quality. Some research that Cornell took a test subject and put them in a completely dark room. They wanted to track their actual sleep quality, so they were looking at their brain waves, they were looking at what their brain was doing, and they put a light the size of a quarter

behind their knee. And that was enough to throw them out of their sleep cycles. So it was disrupting their sleep quality just by that light exposure behind their knee. Is there something special photo receptor modulation behind the knee? Or is this the same as if you did it on the palm of my hand or the back of my shoulder? It could be pretty much anywhere because our skin from head to toe has photo receptors that pick up light and send signals to every other cell in our bodies. But because this particular subject was so deprived of any light,

the very small amount of light was, we have no signal, oh, we do have a signal, and it's behind the knee. Yeah. And we will follow that based on and we will then run the circadian clock off that. Because all of our other cells are trying to figure out what time is it?

Right? There's this light coming in. The knee knows. Ha ha ha. M in. And he knows. Nisi. Yeah, yeah. All right. I knew a girl named Nisi. So here's the thing. When we understand this really remarkable influence, if you talk even with Andrew Huberman in our conversation, really talking about this advent, this new term called light pollution, and how light is top tier as far as really syncing up

our ourselves, our biology with all of life, right? I mentioned that we're kind of lined up with the 24 hour solar day. And so it's light is really the kind of tip of the spear. And so using that to our advantage, recently because we simply didn't know, we just started consuming, you know, like there's a lot, we're in the golden age of television. There's a lot of great stuff to watch.

We got our devices and, you know, we got the foam, there's also, there's so much going on, we don't want to miss out. And so we're constantly having this influx of light information and it's completely throwing our clocks off. I know it when I'm in the studio, for example, all day, under artificial lights, I can have, I see a noticeable detriment to my sleep quality that night. It just, it is what it is. And I do, but now, of course, I know little things that I can kind of help to optimize this.

And so pointing to a tip, like what is one, what are one of the things that we could do knowing that are skitt and by the way, let me give a very logical example. When the sun is hitting your skin, it can literally change the color of your skin. All right. You have photo receptors that are picking up light all the time. All right. And the sun is very different though. The the the luxe the the the power of that light is so otherworldly. It is such a special thing man. Like it's like that's how we have life here. And now we've course in our culture we've been sort of programmed more so to fear the sun. Right, and so we need to have more balanced perspective. But at the same time, of course, respected is very powerful.

With that being said, it's not moonlight that disrupts in the same way that artificial lights do, which the moon can seem kind of bright, like it's bright, but it's the lux of that light, the way that it's, the way that that light is emanating, we evolved with that as well. It's like cellular data that makes sense, like it's nighttime. Andrew said that,

phylight doesn't disrupt circadian rhythm. There it is, very simple. And so, if we look at what we have had thousands upon thousands of years next to as far as a light that we create, well, not that we created, but we can generate with fire, that is a different hue. Right? It's kind of this orange-ish reddish, like it's a softer tone of light. And so if we do want to have some form of light in a room, maybe like a good salt lamp or something on a low dimmer for night light versus the bright-ass like night light that my grandmother gave me, you know? So here's my point. One of the best ways, and the first way that I noticeably improved my sleep quality,

and it was one of those launching paths to writing the book in the first place is when I got some blackout curtains from my room. All right, total darkness, never really slept in total darkness before, except when I was at like, if I go to travel to speak at an event, and they had like a really nice hotel room,

and the blackout curtains, I was like, man, and I would have attributed to the place, like this place is great, but it's the sleep quality that happened in that environment. And so I got some blackout curtains, and that night, man, my sleep was phenomenal. And so if you are okay with the dark, which most of us are, but of course,

some people have, you know, some neuro associations where they want to have, you know, maybe a little bit of light. That is one of the fastest ways to improve your sleep quality because melatonin requires basically two prerequisites. One is darkness, and the other is kind of a cyclical nature, right? Being able to be produced at the same time, essentially, closely, day to day. And this is why we have this new term of social jet lag as well, where again, we kind of stick to a routine, but on the weekend, everything is like whatever.

And then we have that lag on Monday. You know, it got a case of the Mondays. It's not the fact that we're going back to work as that, man, my whole shit is thrown off and I'm sleep deprived now. We'll get back to talking to Sean in one minute, but first I need to tell you about element. Element is a science-backed electrolyte ratio

of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. You need to stop having coffee first thing in the morning because your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day, but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system. I used element for years before I started working with them because it tastes fantastic and it helps to optimize brain health, it regulates your appetite and it curbs cravings. Just because you're drinking water does not mean that you're properly hydrated.

You also need the electrolytes to carry that in your body. Best of all, they have a no BS, no questions asked, refund policy, where you can buy 100% risk-free, and if you do not love it for any reason, they will give you your money back, and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Head to the link in the description below or go to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom beyond light pollution,

which I think everybody can kind of see 50 years, you know, go back a hundred years. I don't even think that you would have had lights within the home be widely available. Adventive radio, which is stimulation, but no light, TV, devices, blue screens, tons and tons of screen time. What else have been the biggest changes? I mean, you mentioned even sort of cultural impacts like the desire to hustle and grind. What else do you think have been the biggest move and changes aside from light pollution over the last 50 years? Such a great question. You said the key word. You said the C word culture culture. Exactly. Let's define culture.

Culture is defined as the shared attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors of a group of people pass from one generation to the next. All right. Culture is functioning as an invisible hand that's guiding our decisions. Here in the United States, we have aspirations of freedom. We believe that we are totally free. But our freedom is based on the choices that we've been exposed to in our culture. There are certain choices that we've been exposed to in our culture. There are certain choices that we don't even know exist. You're free within the constraints of what you're aware of. Exactly. Because even our cravings are cultural. The food that

we crave is cultural. It's based on the things that we've been exposed to. There are people in other cultures who crave different things because that is what has been impressed upon them is human food. Like there are folks in Cambodia that will gladly eat a deep fried tarantula in this real talk. You know, it's a real thing. Delicacy have you had before? No, have you?

No, I haven't. No. But apparently it tastes good. All right. There are folks in Iceland eating fermented shark. You know, there's folks in Kenya eating Yamachoma barbecue goat meat. All right. The list goes on and on.

Some of these things might seem very strange to us because here in our culture, and you ask what another one of these big changes are. According to the BMJ, and we're talking top, top tier peer-review journal. Approximately 60% of the average American adults diet is now made of ultra-processed foods. Alright, humans have been processing foods forever for thousands of years. Cooking a food is processing the food. Whether it's cooking, a steak, making a sweet potato, taking olives and pressing the oil out, that's all processing, but those are minimally processed. They're not denatured so much that you can still tell where they come from. They still have an essence of something real.

Ultra-process foods, on the other hand, is when you see a field of wheat, and somehow, some way that becomes fucking poptarts. You see that field of wheat, and it becomes frosted flakes, right? It's like, where, if I was to present that box of pop tarts or those frosted flakes, to someone living in Cambodia or like a rice paddy in Thailand and there's like, where did this come from? They're not going to have any clue at all because it's like it's not real. That doesn't come from anything real. And so not to mention the processing that it takes, yes,

but let's not forget about all of these newly invented synthetic ingredients that are added along the way. How's this impact us like? Oh, such a good question. This is such a good question. So there's two really interesting things that is coming out in the data. So one part is, well, we're not getting. All right, there are certain, you can have good sleep and darkness, you can have the most fancy pants mattress,

you can check all the boxes for all the things. But if you're deficient in the key nutrients that build your sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters, you are still going to have disrupted sleep quality. If you don't have the stuff that literally builds the stuff that makes the magic happen, you're going to have problems. And I saw this again and again and again working with real people in the real world. Just for example, vitamin C. So a lot of folks, of course,

we know about vitamin C for your immune system. All right. Now, that is putting vitamin C in a very pithy box. It's responsible for so many things. For our skin health, it's a big contributor for our skin health, but it is a huge contributor to our sleep quality. And one study was published in PLOS1, Public Library of Science 1, and they uncovered that folks with a vitamin C deficiency

were more prone to disrupted sleep. They didn't have problems falling asleep, but they had problems staying asleep. And so knowing this, what we tend to do is like, I want to make sure that I'm getting my vitamin C in, and we get a vitamin C supplement. I went to a conventional university. I had the big auditorium nutritional science class. I paid for this shit. I paid for this miseducation number, but I'll have to tell you. In that class, we were taught very rudimentary things and forced and foremost based on the food pyramid. All right, so I went to college in the late 90s. I just went out first with the college. And within this, they said, you know, my teacher would be like, the hallmark of the diet, seven to 11 servings of healthy whole grains.

And make sure also that you recommend for yourself and patients if you work with people to take a multivitamin to get all your vitamins and minerals. And so I was taught that vitamin C is one thing and I can just get it from this multivitamin. Of course, there's vitamin C in foods as well, but what we were not taught and what most people unfortunately have not realized and that's changing today in this conversation is that there isn't just one form of vitamin C. There are multiple forms of vitamin C. There are multiple forms of B12, multiple forms of vitamin D. The list goes on and on. Multiple forms. And we're just know maybe like 5% of what's in food now. There's so much we don't know. So the question is, are you getting the vitamin C that is actually usable by

yourselves? Now, here's where this gets a little bit sticky. So looking for that vitamin C to support our immune system or sleep quality, a lot of times we'll grab those little packets, you know, those little energy, emergency, whatever. And we don't realize that over 90% of the vitamin C products sold in the United States are made from genetically modified cornstarch and corn syrup. It's ultra processed in every sense of the word. And one of the studies that actually share my new book, the Eat Some Order Family Cookbook, looked at what happens when we're taking real whole food-based vitamin C versus synthetic. And this was published in the Journal of Cardiology. The Journal of Cardiology. And so what they did was, they took people who were doing a behavior that would cause

a lot of information and oxidative stress, namely smoking, shout out to a smoking mark. All right, namely smoking. All right, and so they take these test subjects and they give them a concentrated vitamin C in a form of this really, I superfood has been really drug-thru the mud, all right? Truly, this is the most vitamin C dense food ever discovered. So if anything's gonna fit in this category, it's Camu, Camu Berry, C-A-M-U-C-A-M-U. So they use a whole food-based concentrated

of Camu, Camu, or a conventional vitamin C synthetic supplement. So they're continuing their behavior, and they're tracking their biomarkers. They tracked their data for a week. They found that when the test subjects took the real whole food-based vitamin C, they had a significant reduction in inflammatory biomarkers. You know, things like C-reactive protein,

oxidative stress, and there were no changes with the synthetic run of the mill vitamin C supplement. It didn't impact them at all. And as a matter of fact, that synthetic form of vitamin C, and this is another study that I mentioned in the book as well, doubles the incidence of developing kidney stones. All right, so the question is, can my cells relate to this nutrient? Is it real? Is it recognizable? Just because the chemistry is the same does not mean that they are the same in the human body. We evolved interacting with food chemistry,

but today we have all of these isolated synthetic versions of things and assembly doesn't function the same way. I think a lot of people are pretty well aware, or at least they've got an idea that's supposed to have a morning routine, right? Whether it's the 15 minutes of sunlight in the eyes and the cold plunge and the grounding and the meditation and the breathwork and all that sort of stuff, far fewer people have a cool down sequence at the end of the day, an evening time routine. If you were to give the big movers for somebody who just spends a typical amount of time doing typical things, sometimes on their phone, sometimes on their screen, exercise an adequate amount, but it's not insane, they're not a professional athlete.

What would you say, when do you begin getting ready for bed, for sleep time, what are the do's and what are the don'ts and how big is this territory of time leading up to bed? How would you how would you prescribe someone's pre sleep ritual? We could get the sexiest juiciest sleep of our lives if we follow whatever about the share. It starts with dinner. It starts with dinner. That evening routine because the dinner table is potentially the most powerful down regulator of that kind of sympathetic fighter flight nervous system. And this is based on some of the strongest science that we have, period.

I'll share two quick studies. One of them was a colleague of mine, Dr. Robert Waldinger. We had a fascinating show. Okay. Robert Waldinger, there you go. He is the director of the longest running longitudinal human study on longevity. And their data indicates that beyond beating obesity,

beyond exercise, great diet, all the things, and these things matter, the number one determine on how long we're gonna live is the quality of our relationships. Couple that with a new study that I highlighted in the East Martyr Family cookbook, conducted by research that bring them young university. This is a meta-analysis of 148 studies, 300,000 people,

and they found that our relationships led to having healthy relationships or what they called healthy social bonds led to a 50% reduction in all cause mortality. So that means a 50% reduction in death from everything, prematurely. And so there's something special about human interaction and relationships. And what it really is, just the sidebar is that our relationships more than anything influence what we eat. It influences our sleep habits.

It influences our exercise habits, how we relate to ourselves, how we think about ourselves, how we feel our emotional stability. It's the tip of the spear. And so here's how all of this ties together around the dinner table. The dinner table really functions as a unifier to bring people together.

This is something we evolved doing. Into the evening, even in tribal constructs. And if anybody's been to Hawaii, for example, they do this kind of dramatization of a luau, right? This the, I'm like, he beats you, I've seen the exact thing. Yeah, you go, like we did this hunt, we got this food,

you know, we're all dining together, we're telling stories. That's really how human history has passed along before they advent of books. And we're celebrating, right? Through our evolution, we hunted, gathered together, procured our food together, prepared the food, ate together, and celebrated together. That was the time of human bonding.

It's deeply ingrained in our DNA. We expect that our genes expect us to do this. And so, this is where dinner is the first domino because when we're eating with people that we care about, friends and families as well, family and friends are included, there's this really remarkable switching over from the sympathetic fight or flight to the parasympathetic nervous system. That's what the data is indicating, which is so exciting. One of the reasons is we start to produce more oxytocin.

So oxytocin, it's got a couple of nicknames, cuddle hormone, love hormone, but why it really matters in this context is that it's been found to neutralize cortisol, so to help us to downregulate. And we're very good, we're very, very good at going zero to 100. All right, real quick, shout out to Drake. But we're not very good at going 100 to zero at all. Being with people that we love does something for our nervous systems to help us to down regulate faster than anything. So take advantage of that. And how does this play out in the data?

Do I have any data to affirm this? You know I do. All right, so really quickly, I'm gonna rattle these off. Researchers at Harvard, tracked human eating behavior, family eating behavior, and food intake, all right, for years. And when I found this data, I was like, why doesn't anybody know this?

And so they found that people who eat together with their family on a regular basis have dramatically higher intake of real, whole, unprocessed foods, and by nature, significantly higher intake of vital nutrients that prevent chronic diseases and help us sleep better, by the way, and those family members consumed significantly less ultra-processed foods,

namely chips and soda. What about for kids? Publishing the journal pediatrics, they found that eating with our children just three meals per week or more, but three is that a minimum effective dose, which I'm a big fan of, knowing that we want change, but we don't want to change that much. Eating with our kids three times a week led to dramatically reduce incidence of those children developing obesity and eating disorders.

What about for us as adults? Tech workers at IBM were tracked, looking at their family eating behavior around dinner, being able to, quote, make it home for dinner. Regardless of how much stress they were experiencing at work, if they were able to consistently eat dinner with their families, their stress remained negligible. It was manageable. It was neutralized. Work morale and productivity stayed high. Stress stayed manageable.

But as soon as things started cutting into their ability to eat dinner with their families, stress levels went up exceedingly high. Work morale went down, productivity goes down. All right. There's something special about eating together with people that you care about. I mentioned oxytocin. I mentioned the switch over to the parasympathetic. Here's the key word tying all this together. The nickname of the parasympathetic nervous system

is rest, rest and digest. Do you hear me? That is one, that's the nickname of this part of the nervous system. And this is a binary system. It's either this or that. It's on or off. You're even sympathetic, parasympathetic. And so switching over, being with people that we care about, especially under the context of good food, it is incredibly special. Last part here is the psychological benefits to be able to help to offload and downregulate. When you are feeling seen, we have a deep human need for significance. And being able to see your

child or your loved one and for them to feel like they matter versus you know what we're doing now is this because not only did we devolve from tribes to neighborhoods Where we start to get more separate, but when neighborhoods were they advent of that we still had extended family and close proximity Then we started to get isolated to our nuclear family only and then in just in the last couple of decades as we leaned into this whole conversation We've become even more divided within our own household because of our devices. Our devices have divided us.

And not to villainize these things, of course, but we need to keep them in context. We need real FaceTime with real people. Well, my video guy before we got started was telling me there's a meme going around the internet that I haven't seen yet, but that, like, how would guys be able to eat if they didn't turn YouTube on? Like, that what you need to do is turn YouTube on in order for you to then begin eating your food, right? And I remember an ex-girlfriend of mine from ages and ages ago told me the story about one of her exes the first time that he'd come around for food with her family. And he'd sat down and they were all sat around the table. And he took his plate off the table onto his lap to eat it on his

lap, because he was so conditioned to his family sitting on the couch and watching the TV and eating food from his lap. So he was sat at a dining table with no TV there, had to slide back and put the plate on his lap, which is just such a funny bit of conditioning that he obviously didn't see, but to everybody else that are on the table was like, this is crazy. But yeah, I see it myself.

Dr. K. Healthy Gamer, who is a psychiatrist classically trained in Western medicine, but also did four or five years in Eastern medicine too. So he's got this really lovely holistic view. And he has a fantastic community for young guys and girls that are into gaming, some of them have got screen addictions, some of them don't. But it's mental health for, you know, young people that use the internet a lot. And him and Hamza, another kid from the UK, started doing Zoom calls, daily Zoom calls, so that people could just eat food with other people.

Interesting. So they would jump on a call, and sometimes people would say nothing. They'd just have a scream with a bunch of faces, and they would do it together. Because it's all well and good, saying, being around people that you love, being with Because it's all well and good saying, being around people that you love, being with your family, son, and so forth,

like I moved away from the country that I was born in, I'd love to eat food with my mom and dad, but if they'd have to be up at midnight in order to be able to even FaceTime me, I've got my housemate, so yeah, I can do it with him, but I do think that it's just so interesting to look at the solutions that people are coming up with to try and recreate

What it is that you're suggesting that they do let's just slow down a little bit I'm gonna guess as well that you would tell me that if you have to try and have a conversation In between bites of food that it's going to slow down the pace at which you eat which is going to reduce satiety it's going to ensure that you chew your food properly, which is going to make it easier to digest. It's going to give you more breath between it, which is going to mean that your digestion's got more time to, you know, all of these different things.

It's a full stack of improvement around what you do. And then maybe everyone's sick of spending time indoors and goes, why don't we go for a little walk once we finish up? And the whole family goes for a walk and then you get all the benefits of the time and it walks. There's no supplement that can do all the things you just mentioned. There's no drug that can do all the things you

just mentioned. These are things that our genes expect us to do. You know, that's the really remarkable part about it. So of course, we do want to find some, some transitionary tools like being able to talk on FaceTime or whatever the case might be. But when I walked in here, you're eating with your boys. You guys were hanging out, eating some food, but it's those moments. But of course, it might be a little bit rushed, it might be this and that. But there's something about taking a moment to pause and just be present, eat, and connect with people.

When it comes to timing here, I remember, and it's something that I followed just because it's easy to remember, a 3-2-1 rule for sleep, three hours before sleeping, no more food, two hours before eating, trying to limit fluids, and then one hour before, the two hours before sleeping, trying to limit fluids, one hour before sleeping, try and limit light. When it comes to us going from eating on an evening time, have you got a rough rule that you try to follow between food time and sleep time and then let's continue this sexiest night of sleep of your life protocol all the way up to getting in about. Yeah, that's a great question. So, this is going to be situationally dependent. It's going to be unique because there are some folks and now we have the advent of, like,

you know, continuous glucose monitors where you could track this. If I eat too far out from dinner for myself, I notice that my blood sugar goes significantly low at night and it can pull me out of sleep. All right, so, and I'm talking about like more than five hours before sleep, which doesn't seem, that's not a lot of time. And so for me, it's like finishing my last bite of food, maybe two to three hours before I go to bed is ideal for me personally.

Now I've done all kinds of stuff. Again, 21 years, being at this level, I've experimented a lot. So I've done all kinds of fasts, I've done 21 days, I've done all kinds of stuff, I don't want anybody have to go through, but I found my way to sleep, your body will sort stuff out, but you got to find what's optimal for you.

All right, so in the transition into this from the dinner table where we left off, and by the way, all of those studies are featured in the new East Martyr family cookbook. There's over 250 scientific references in a cookbook, which has never been done. But then also we talk about what are we eating so that we can get those good sleep nutrients in.

And I'll just throw this out here really quickly. I'll share two really quickly. One of them, dark cherries, all right. There are a couple of studies looking at cherry juice as an implement for improving sleigh quality, but the sugar can be a little bit, you know, that can be sketchy. But a couple of the studies I share in the book, first of all, cherries are one of the most dense sources of naturally occurring melatonin of any food. Chares are dark cherries in particular, pretty rich in melatonin.

On top of that, one of the studies looked at the anthocyanins in these cherries in particular, pretty rich in melatonin. On top of that, one of the studies looked at the anthocyanins in these cherries and found that they have the potential to shrink fat cells. And so it's cool, you found this stuff, and I put my emojis next to every kind of benefit. So for the metabolic health, the fat loss is a little muscle emoji. There's a sleep emoji there.

Then you go back to the associated food, like, okay, what do I do to eat this food? And we've got like a couple of cool recipes. One of them is a cherry frozen yogurt pop that you can have after dinner. My kids love it. And it's like fun stuff to make too. And they're very simple.

That's another thing about this is making it easy as well. I don't want a recipe that's got 37 ingredients. Like let's just make this simple, delicious, and there you go. But another food, which is really a great kind of nighttime routine, and there are many, and you don't want to necessarily eat this dish every night. But salmon is really something special when it comes to improving and supporting sleep quality. Salmon's got a moment in the sun right now for sure.

A lot of people are aware of some of the benefits, but those omega-3s are one of those things where a deficiency in omega-3s is clinically shown to disrupt our sleep cycles. All right, so it's not just this like, oh, it's good for your brain. No, no, no, no. Seriously, your brain needs these omega-3s.

They're responsible for creating structural fats in the body, not as energy, but like to rebuild and support your brain cells so they can talk to each other. It's kind of important. And one of the studies used FMRIs and tracked people's, like, actually looked at their brains, which is again, instead of guessing. And they found that people who ate less than four grams of DHA and EPA, these are animal-based omega-3s. Four grams or less had the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

Four grams is that minimal effect of dose, and you can get that in a high-quality, wild-caught, eight ounce piece of salmon. And every, we've all had nice salmon for lay. That's great. I've got a honey surr had nice salmon for lay, that's great. I've got a honey suracha salmon in the book, which is great. But what about a salmon burger?

All right, so that's probably one of my favorite foods right now, are these salmon burgers. But like turning these great sleep supporting foods, having delicious food experiences, have all the dinner table benefits, and now we transition into the next thing. And so, again, I'm gonna say generally, two to four hours before bed to finish your last meal,

ideally, for most people, but there's gonna be outliers. All right? So now, what do we do? Do we get off, do we finish dinner? Let's say the goal is to go to bed at 10 p.m. Just in this context. And I finished dinner at 730. All right, none that do I want to go and jump right back on my screen, watch a show, whatever I could. That could be part of my brain's reward. Like I watch 30 minutes of a favorite show, right? Or I go in game with my son, play 2K, buses ass.

He's pretty good too. Right after, again, creating that post meal reward for sitting down and eating together, right? But now, you might want to pop on some blue light blocking glasses. You know, you might want to do that. So it's starting to think about light pollution You know, you might want to do that. So it's starting to think about light pollution three hours before bed? Depends on the person, but I just that's why I put the word might. Just rough, rough, you know, you're asking me to run about three hours before bed, start thinking about the light you're exposed. Yes, exactly. Start thinking about it, at least.

And then from there, you know, again, if we're popping back on, whatever, for me, I'll just tell you what it is from my kind of light curfew is one hour, it is. And I might be the person who's impressed that in popular culture, because again, I wrote about this almost 10 years ago, at least, that's the minimum for me. Ideally, 90 minutes to two hours, ideally. I think a lot of people would have a question of okay, especially now, right? We're approaching winter You guys are losing daylight savings. That's just that's getting axed

Evening times get dark pretty early and the more northernly you get I'm from Newcastle in the northeast of the UK Which is the last city before Scotland so around about December mid-December time, it can be sunset at 4pm, right? So it's really dark all the time. It's not sunrise until after 8pm, so it's a very, very short amount of time. How am I supposed to exist? I don't want to bump into things, right? I've got fear. I'm also, let's be real here, I don't want to be bored. I don't want to bump into things, right? I've got fear. I'm also, let's be real here, I don't want to be bored. I don't want to be bored for the last 90 minutes of every single day. If I want to, you saying it's probably a bad idea for me to watch a screen, but if I read

a book, I need a light to light the book. Is an e-reader going to disrupt my circadian rhythm? Can I use my Kindle? What if it's on warm? What can people do to actually enjoy the last two hours of their can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. the neurotic behavior to the side. And we all, especially when we're working to get healthy and to achieve certain things, we do go through a phase. I think everybody does of being neurotic about these things. We've got a chill. We live in the modern world, and there's stuff, there's stuff going on. And there are certain things that can help us enjoy that stuff even more if we feel better.

And so, if we can create an evening routine for the majority of the time that works for us, where we still can do some of our favorite things, because that's what life is all about as well. We've got to get that juice. Well, yeah, what's the point in optimizing your sleep if you sacrifice the enjoyment of your spare time in order to get it? Like, what's the point of getting good sleep? Presumably so that you enjoy life. And if you sacrifice the enjoyment of life to sleep while in the hopes that sleeping well will give you an enjoyment of life, you're like you're short cutting everything. Exactly. You just said it perfectly, you know.

So we've got to come into this with some balance, with a balanced perspective and give ourselves some grace and some wiggle room and some enjoyment. And if we can do little things like again, throwing on some blue light black and glasses, we do have- Do you have any brands that you prefer? I wanna throw brands out. Okay, well, raw optics, matte-marooka from my pop-up. There we go, boom.

I like raw optics. I know that he's done an awful lot of research. They're not cheap, but it seems like a lot of the blue-blocking glasses that are cheap that don't have a very heavily colored lens. If you can still see all of the normal colors with a little bit of a blue tinge, that's not really doing very much. According to him, you need to be,

it needs to be like offensively colored and you can get them in yellow or red. And I noticed anecdotally, if I put them on, I know this is the same with some of my other friends, any high quality blue blocking glasses. After about 30 minutes, you almost feel this down regulation. Interesting. Calpable effect that I noticed. And I was using it in the UK, remembering that it gets dark early in the summer, in the winter, but in the summer, it really overcooks it.

So you can have sunset at 10.30 at night. So for me, I would pop them on and go for an evening walk, maybe 9.30, and I would find while I was on this walk, I would get this down regulation. So we're looking at some blue-blocking glasses, again, if we're going to be exposed to light. Yeah, I have some from him as well. And you just said, there's going to be a varying degree of how effective this is, but also part of it can be the neural association as well to put those on. And because that's one of the things that I noticed, definitely early on in testing these

things, is that as soon as I pop them on, I start to get a little bit sleepier, you know. And human, the human brain is always looking for a routine. It's always looking to automate behaviors. And so what's said is that neurons that fire together, wire together. And so that behavior of like, I'm having this evening routine. I care about my sleep, I'm giving it some respect. I'm popping these on, I'm still, you know, dabbling and, you know, watching a show

or, you know, doing a little bit of stuff on my phone. I mentioned playing a video game with my kid, right? Now we have to look at the other part of the stimulation though, right? And so this is where we do wanna have, give yourself that screen curfew of at least an hour to just like, get off of the screens, do something else. And by the way, there's thousands of other things you could do. All right. But we just like,

you know, so there's thousands of other things that we can do. And I'm going to share a couple with you. So you mentioned like reading a book. Yes, we can have some dim light, you know, read a book. Read a read, read a re, there are real books are still out here on the streets. They still do exist. But even more so, this is a good time to just, if you can chat with somebody, you don't have to stare at a phone or a screen to talk with somebody that you care about if you're not in person. But if you're in a relationship, for example, and you're in the house together, this is a great time for my wife and I just to catch up, talk. And also one

of the chapters in Sleep Smarter, which had just happened to be on page 69, was about sex. I didn't know somebody who bought the book told me they were like, Sean is slick. He thinks he's slick, but it was talking about orgasm and how that impacts sleep quality. And so we've got some kind of cultural memes about people falling asleep, whatever afterwards, like seriously, you're producing a cocktail of different chemicals, chemistry that does support sleep quality significantly. We've got, I mentioned oxytocin before, we've got prolactin, for example. And men, one of the studies that I mentioned in the book, actually produce like four times more prolactin

when they have an orgasm with their partner versus having one by themselves. And prolactin is very, very heavy for optimizing improving sleep quality and making people sleepy. That's part of the reason even like the going another round is like the prolactin equation. And so what's so interesting here is that, and by the way, it's like some people like,

you know, with the partner, I'll go right to sleep versus like by myself, I go eat a bowl of cereal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you've been watching me. Yeah. And so just understanding that the big O is the name of that chapter does in fact again. In that time gap, maybe you can have sex.

That hopefully, hopefully that's better than, you know, I don't know, Yellowstone or whatever else, you don't people are watching. But, you know, just with that, just being able to invest in your relationship, which is again, that pays back so much. And that's just, I'm just throwing out a couple of things. There are so many things that we can do. Have you got any insights, a lot of the people that are listening to this may listen to podcasts

when they fall asleep? I sometimes find, if I'm listening to something that is too cerebral compelling and demanding, that it puts me into a kind of sort of lean-in curiosity state on an evening time, whereas if I get some nice fiction or some narrative nonfiction, I like stories, history documentaries about stuff like World War II and bits and pieces like that.

That, to me, kind of puts me into more of a, what feels like a narrative story mode that feels like it primes me more for sleep. If you have, is there any data to back any of this stuff? There absolutely is. I knew it wasn't bro signs. Yeah, specifically fiction. You know, reading fiction, listening to, this

is how we evolved is having those stories in the evening, like our genes, it's an input, it's something we've done for a long time. And we have this cultural, you know, kind of iconic thing of like reading your kids a bedtime story. We're just big adult babies. If you really bow down to it, but instead of a nice bedtime story. We're just big adult babies. If you really bow down to it, but instead of a nice bedtime story, now we just stressed. We're just thinking about all kinds of shit to stress us out. Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to like, let me switch over. Like literally our brain is functioning differently when we are engaged in story, you know. And so absolutely, there's some really cool science

that's already been affirmed on that. But also, you know, this is an opportunity too. As you just mentioned, I love that of listening to a podcast as well, because you don't have to stare at a screen to listen to a podcast. The same thing holds true with, there are people eating lunch right now watching us. Oh yeah.

All right. And shout out if you are, leave a comment down below. Tell us what you're eating. Yeah, exactly. Was it from the cook? Was it from the new cookbook? Oh, right. If that part, if you're from eating something from the new cookbook.

But the thing is, I've been known, especially on a lunch break to like pop on something on YouTube, like, you know, Conan O'Brien clips or something brand of thing, you know, and so again, it's not to be neurotic. And I've structured my life in a way. I've created a micro culture in my household where I have real face time and eat together with the people that I care about on a regular basis. So it's a both-and-world. This is the point. We don't have to be either or. We don't have to, you know, like, be completely a tectatic or a luddite. It's a both-and world. What we do need to do is listen to our bodies, listen to our minds, acknowledge where we are feeling this kind of dysfunction or turbulence within our spirit, because oftentimes it's

like a guidance system, because there are certain inputs that we are missing out on, and other inputs that we might be getting too much of. One of the things, it's funny that you mentioned the ancestral disposition that we have, or the evolutionary sort of priming that we have to hear stories around the campfire before we're about to go to sleep. And this is absolutely bro signs, but if someone wants to do the study on it, it works for me radio dramas, as they're called technically, so a full cast rendition of a story. There's my favorite author, fiction author, PS Brown, who does red rising, is slowly releasing all of his books in

full, unabridged, but with an entire cast. And this is soundscaped with all of the sounds, and it's so immersive, and there's a different character for each voice. And I find those to be, if I really, really want to fall asleep if I'm on a plane or if I want to do whatever. If I drop into one of those, it's outrageous. And I wonder whether that almost mimics in some regards the typical campfire surrounding. But yeah, I mean, from my side, that sort of falling asleep listening to something, the problem is, as with a lot of the issues of technology,

it's so compelling that it can actually start to push that sleep window further and further away. One more chapter, one more whatever. So the discipline to be able to say no to it is also, again, neither the Luddites nor the addict, it's somewhere in between. What about, this is something I think which is a very, very common issue. And hopefully earlier in the day, people have exercised, got sunlight, done all of the things to wind down.

Even having done all of that, I've noticed periods in my life where I struggle to fall asleep. If somebody is regularly getting into bed and having an hour plus of latency before they're able to fall asleep. What are the, what are the first few culprits or places that you would be looking at in order to try and optimize this? All right. It's like the matrix right now. There's, there's a hundred different things that

it could be. Rank order the top five. It's going to be a situation to pin it. I'll rank some of them. But even with you mentioning that the full cast and the story, the ancient tenet is to know thyself, know thyself. That's top tier importance because we're so unique. I just want to throw in a little parenthesis as well. By, by the way, it doesn't have to be a fiction, it could be a personal development thing,

it could be a sermon, it could be whatever helps you to make that transition into sleep, whatever works for you, give yourself some space and some grace to try some different things. Now, we sleep latency. So I'm going to tell you the first thing, period. And, you know, it encompasses so much,

but oftentimes it's just stress. It's excessive stress, and us not metabolizing that stress efficiently. What do you mean when you say metabolizing stress? So being able to, you know, cortisol, for example, has kind of been drug through the mud and given this bad name, but cortisol is not bad.

I like to think of it like the incredible hawk. You know, it's like, yes, it can smash them shit, and like, but also it can get stuff done. It is powerful, it gets us up and going, and it can get a little bit out of hand, especially if there's a lot of hawk, you know. And so we need hawk to turn back into Bruce Banner. Basically, this is a great analogy. I just came up with that one just now. All right. And so to downregulate,

actually in the movie, the first Avengers movie, Scarlett Johansson's character, Black Widow, she would do this little kind of rhyme, like this little kind of song, this little kind of technique to help the big guy to down-regulate and soothe him and bring him back down. All right, a lot of times we're just kind of running too hot. We've got a lot of adrenaline, you know, epinephrine, norpinephrine, cortisol is not the only stress hormone,

but we've got a lot of that just pumping through our system based on our thoughts. Our thoughts create chemistry in our bodies, instantaneously. And a lot of times, one of my really good friends, Dr. Daniel Aiman, he calls him ants, automatic negative thoughts. And we just get on these loops of these things

that can just weigh on our spirit. We've got to be able to, when I say metabolize, really I'm talking about to neutralize the shift gears over to that parasympathetic, and it depends on you what that's gonna be, what the treatment's gonna be. So this could be a simple change in perception. You know, sometimes it's just a reality check.

And I'm a big fan of that one, personally, which is like, I might be thinking about the 10 things that I need to get done. Like I just did Good Morning America a couple of days ago. And I was in with my publisher the day before, and she was like, so, you know, are you excited? Da-da-da. And she was like, I would be a nervous wreck.

I don't even know how to- Hey, thanks. Hey. Real good pep talk. But for me, it's just like, because I just don't perceive it like she does. And if I was to be like, oh my God, I gotta, I have a very short window of time. I gotta get up super early and I need to,

whatever, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I'm just gonna be like, there's nothing I could do about it right now. Chill, just, it doesn't matter. I'm here going to be like, there's nothing I could do about it right now. Chill, just, it doesn't matter. I'm here in my bed. None of that matters. Just chill. So I could, I know how to speak to myself, you know, and again it's a reality check for

me that these things that I might be pining over, there's, and here's a really cool thing too, is that it's during sleep that so much of our problems are solved. And we've got some really cool data on this, even REM sleep in particular, in dreaming. Like dreaming is some freaky stuff, man. You know, and we think we've got some good ideas about what's happening, but during REM sleep we know that this process called memory consolidation is taking place. So like things from our short-term memory kind of like

are for the day of getting converted to a short-term memory and becoming more retrievable. But also there's this kind of like, as we're playing, I was kind of like our brain in a way is keeping us entertained while it's fixing shit. And one of the things that I do, and I'm just gonna share this tip another way to downregulate,

is if I'm dealing with the problem, I'm not just going to sit there with it and worry about it. And this is from thinking real rich, you know, pulling hill, and it changed my life years ago. And actually the person who introduced me to his Bob Proctor and I had multiple conversations with him It's just like man just even say that stuff coming from where I come from to be able to share time with people like that It's my blowing but I I have a meeting with my board of trusted advisors So as I'm laying in bed if for example, it's a challenged with Let's just give an example of if it's somebody with

their health, all right. If they're wanting to deal with the health issue, they can pick maybe, you know, a table, like a long table like this and there's three people on one side, three people on the other. And who are those trusted advisors that would sit at your table to offer you counsel? You know, maybe this might be, you know, Andrew Huberman, maybe this might be Dr. Daniel Aiman, neuroscientist, maybe this might, I might be at the table with you. And then on the other side, maybe it's like, you know, your friend who's really into health, you know, whatever the case might be. And then you just go through and you ask them what, what is their opinion on what you should do to get better or to feel better? Because the

thing is, you already know what they're going to fucking say. You know what they're do to get better or to feel better. Because the thing is, you already know what they're gonna fucking say. You know what they're gonna say. But sitting down and doing this practice and allowing them to speak to you through your mind is so remarkable. Well, the depersonalization of that tactic, right? Of removing yourself from being both judge, jury,

executioner, the evidence gatherer and the person that is supposed to coordinate this entire charade. Yeah. It's so important. Like, I've got written on my fridge, what would you tomorrow want you today to do? And the reason that it's so useful is it gives you that perspective,

just a tiny, tiny little bit of distance between what's happening now and what's happening tomorrow and what you would want to do. And yeah, I liked that. Okay, so we've got looking at the stresses, the kind of open loops, as of yet we haven't finding a way for yourself to help to metabolize as I stress to downregulate instead of, you know, going into the, you know, the rally. I think that most people, when they're trying to fall asleep

and struggling, what's happening is they will ruminate aggressively. Very few people are struggling to fall asleep while their mind is perfectly peaceful and blank. They are trying to keep the heart rate low whilst doing very intense exercise all mentally. I'm trying to keep myself calm and yet I'm doing the opposite thing if I keep myself calm. I'm very active. Is there anything else other than the other main culprits for this sleep latency issue?

Absolutely. So just to put a cherry on top of that again, stress is the number one thing and it comes in many different forms and fashions. So finding something for yourself to process all of that inner chatter. That's when my mother-in-law calls it. She gave me that lexicon. I've got a lot of inner chatter. And this could be something. Usually it's actually going to be before you get into bed, by the way. And I want to offer up, so here's another way, is to do a form of meditation, even.

If anything, because with meditation, it's one of those ways we can kind of glimpse into theta and delta, potentially, like if you're a really skilled meditator, but this is a way so we can kind of start to tip the scales into more like antibiotic, sleep is truly the antibiotic state that we're in, but we can kind of tiptoe our way into it.

Ideally, because of the neuroassociation, you might not want to do that in bed itself, but you can, know that yourself. Oh, right. So you're saying the bed is to be reserved for sleeping and having sex rule over again. We're not watching TV, we're not working, we're not doing the thing.

I like that. But if a meditation in bed, like there's a body scanning meditation, you can go down intense and relax and that kind of thing. You could do that in bed, but know yourself. If doing a meditation in bed might not transition to sleep the way that you want. And I love a meditation for if we wake up and have trouble falling back asleep. To lay and just try to keep bringing your attention back to your breath. But also, okay, so what can be another thing with sleep latency? Outside of stress, the other thing which is a form of stress is

nutrient deficiencies. Period. All right, again, you can have the best sleep routine if you're not providing your body with those raw materials, those building blocks to help with the conversion of serotonin into melatonin, which serotonin is the prerequisite for making melatonin, by the way, that all has to do. Most of your serotonin is in your gut. And so, what are the things that you're doing nutritionally that could be screwing up that process?

What are the sleep super foods? Oh, good question. I mentioned cherries earlier. That's a top tier, good sleep food, salmon, another top tier, good sleep food. And I'm gonna share another one with you that, you know, it's one of these foods been around for a long time,

but it also has number one, the mega-threes are there as well. Eggs. Great. We identify it oftentimes for us like a morning food. It's not the fact of any of these foods you're just going to eat and fall asleep. All right. But eggs are remarkable in the the cold. The cold is involved in the sleep process as well. And those are mega-threes are really helpful. And also just amino acids, because when we're talking about, when I've said hormones and neurotransmitters several times today, these are essentially cellular DMs. All right, it's enabling yourself to talk to each other.

That's what a hormone is. And at its core, hormones are proteins. If you're deficient in certain amino acids, you can't even make that shit anyway. So your body will do a patchwork job, but if you provide your body with the amino acids, it needs to build those things. You're gonna be in a much better favor.

Okay, another one, trip to fan, all right, trip to fan. That's where you get to see association with the, what we call from where I'm from, itis, like being sleepy after you eat food, especially on Thanksgiving and the turkey and all the things. Yes, turkey is a rich source of Trip to Fan, but there are, you know, certain plant foods as well.

But yeah, Turkey, we'll just put throw that on the list there. So, chicken, turkey, here's a song that has that in it. But those are gonna be a couple of other ones because trip to fan, amino acid, all right? And it's deeply involved in our sleep process. And so what is that? Is that four of them? Five cherries, salmon, trip to fun,

and turkey. Okay, we said Turkey already. Nice. Yes. Yes. Let me give you a drink. There's so many here. Again, we're not talking about guzzling up a pint of water. We're talking about like a serving of like a tea cup.

We know about chamomile for downregulating, for relaxing. We know about kava kava. One of my favorites is Rishi. Rishi T, a dual extracted Rishi T. So this study was published in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior. And the researchers found that drinking Rishi just part of bedtime, we could say an hour before bedtime, 30 minutes an hour, maybe a little bit longer,

was able to, number one, improve sleep latency, meaning you fall asleep faster, it improved overall sleep time, and it improved the quality of test subjects sleep, namely improving their non-rhym deep sleep time. All right, so that's pretty remarkable. And Rishi's been utilized for thousands of years. Do you have a brand that you prefer for the... Forcigmatic. My guy's forcigmatic. It's a dual extraction of the Rishi. been utilized for thousands of years. Do you have a brand that you prefer for them? For sigmatic.

My guys for sigmatic, it's a dual extraction of the Rishi. That's why, primarily. So that means it's an alcohol extract and a hot water extract because different things are gonna pull out of the mushroom based on the extraction method. And if you're just getting one, you can be missing out on like the hot water extract to get a lot of these antioxidant components,

beta-glucans, things like that. But the alcohol extract can get a lot of these antioxidant components, beta, glucose, things like that. But the alcohol extract can get some of these more hormonally pointed compounds. You've mentioned the window, the how important is eggs. Does eggs have to be later in the evening? Does salmon have to be later in the evening? It's just throughout the day we can create the building blocks that are good for the sun. Exactly.

Your body knows what to do to store things away when it needs. Cool. Okay. So we've looked at stress and we've looked at nutrients. I think that those are two pretty big move is we've already touched on some of the new work that you've done. Your book came out this week. Congratulations. Talk to me about the current state of American adults health from a metabolic and a weight perspective. All right. This was published by the CDC in 2022. So just about a year ago, as of this recording, they determined that 60% of American adults now have at least one chronic disease, at least one, and 40% have two or more.

All right. So just a kind of overarching perspective. Look at this. Now, one of our top tier journals that's looking at metabolic health recently published in data and it's been making the rounds on the internet and they established that only 12% of American adults are metabolically healthy. So 88% of adults are not metabolically healthy. And this is looking at certain biomarkers, you know, whether we're talking about hormones, whether we're talking about the role of insulin

and leptin and the list goes on and on. And so now, what does this look like in the real world? Like, what do we see? Well, prior to pandemic related shutdowns, we were at about 42.5% of American adults being clinically obese. And it was projected to reach 50% by 2030. But when things shut down, there was a mighty jump. The data hasn't come out yet completely, but we're probably very close to that 50% already. And if we're talking about overweight and obesity, then we're looking at about 75% of the population right now. Something dramatic has happened because, and also, I can't

leave out kids in this conversation, by the way, there was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and it looked at 200 years of diabetes as a title of the paper. And essentially, type two diabetes, which used to be called adult onset diabetes because kids didn't get that shit. But now a lot of kids, younger and younger and younger populations are getting heart disease, are getting diabetes, are developing obesity. And so, but it was within about a 40 year time span,

just like in the last 40 to 50 years, rates of type two diabetes essentially quite droopled in the US population And along with that childhood obesity just in the last 30 years has tripled All right, let alone us as adults like this is trickling its way down to our little ones Which is incredibly abnormal. And so just a couple of other quick stats, I mentioned earlier about the sleep deprivation stat. But right now our number one, our leading cause of death is still heart disease. And I got to throw this in here as well. A lot of people don't know this, but all simers is number six.

It is just charging up into the top five leading causes of death in the United States. It's an epidemic and it is scary. And a lot of times we don't think about like how is that killing people? Like loss of our cognitive function like that. Man, like that is such a terrible way to die. And researchers are now calling Alzheimer's type three diabetes because it's so related to insulin

dysfunction in the brain. That's literally what Mike said. Yeah. That's literally what Mike said. Yeah. And so I want to mention that but heart disease being the number one killer now, according to again, published data, about 60% of American adults have some degree of heart disease onset already, like that can be tracked, simple blood tests. We could see, okay, you're on your way to die from a heart attack. Is the most common precursor to heart disease obesity or being overweight? That's a great question. There's definitely some interplay.

Let's talk about obesity because right now we're living at a time where people are, there's a framing around obesity. And working as a clinician and working with real people who are struggling with their weight for many years, a lot of people are trying, they are trying very, very hard to lose that weight. but they're existing in a culture that is fighting against them. And so we place a lot of judgment cognitively if we are healthy or of a healthy weight and don't understand the struggles of people who are really trying hard. There are some people who don't give a fuck. And I'll

tell you what, even with that, even as I'm joking about that, I've never met one person who doesn't want to be healthy. If they had a choice, the person who apparently doesn't give a fuck, and they're 350 pounds, if they had a choice, they would be healthy. They would be of a healthy weight, they would have an ideal body and energy and all the things they want. What happens is, we develop something called learned helplessness. On top of that, we have these stories. Like sometimes it's literally about worthiness. It's about what's possible for me. It's about access.

It's about money. It's about all these things. My mother, for example, you know, I grew up in a low income environment. A lot of times I like, my mom would sell her blood. She'd go to the blood bank, sell her blood, get $20 and get us some fast food. A lot of times. And we got food from charities. There's a place called the Hosea House.

We get food, government assistance, all the things. But she was working. She worked overnight at a convenience store. And one of those nights, somebody tried to rob the store and she was working. She worked overnight at convenience store, and one of those nights, somebody tried to rob the store and she was stabbed multiple times. Well, my mom is different. She's alive and well today.

She actually detained the guy and he ended up getting arrested. Yeah, I mean, I'm not kidding at all. I'm not kidding at all, man. Picked on the wrong mother. Like, listen, I'm not kidding. I got so many stories. I'm, listen, I'm trying to, I'm trying to at all. I'm not kidding at all, man. Picked on the wrong mother. Like, listen, I'm not kidding. I got so many stories. I'm, listen, I'm trying to,

I'm trying to hold back and tell you some of the crazy shit she's done. But here's, here's what I'm sharing the stories that, when she went in for, you know, surgery, get the stitches and all the things, afterwards the physician was examining her and he said that if you were not overweight, he said these, these were his words, if you weren't a heavy-set woman, you probably would have died.

Because the depth of penetration of the knife would have been closer to vital organs. So her story is, my fat is my safety. Yeah, I can see how that's a double-edged sword for one of a better term. Damn. So here's the thing too. Again, we have these stories. And for some people, that excess that they're carrying is protection. Maybe it's protection from an assailant.

Maybe it's a protection from a family member. Maybe it's a protection from attention, unwanted attention. There are so many different reasons why folks are in the state that they're in. And I want to remove the judgment and just talk about the biology. Fat cells are phenomenal. It's enabled us to be sitting here today is because of our ancestors and these badass fat cells. We evolved our capacity to utilize stored energy in times of famine. And something a little fun fact about our fat cells

is that our fat cells can actually grow and contain about like a thousand times their own volume. Like the size of it itself, a thousand times its value may can hold energy essentially. We didn't evolve containing that much, however, but today, because we never have a famine, we just keep filling and filling and filling these fat cells. And what happens is we start to have this unwanted immune response because that the stress of that fat cell getting expanded, unnaturally, and never getting a chance to offload is essentially sending out a false distress signal to our immune system that this cell is infected

essentially. You know, there's something abnormal happening here. And as this is happening, this is contributing, and we saw this even during, you know, pandemic-related things with a significantly higher incidence of severe outcomes, hospitalizations, and death when we venture into obesity. And a part of that is the dysfunction that happens with our immune system. Now, on top of that, with the immune system dysfunction, what about cancer? Because part of the ability of cancer to progress is an abnormal relationship with our immune system. And being able to catch things early in our immune system to basically take out rogue cells that, you know, I've

reached the hayflick limit, they're not supposed to replicate all the things, and take that, take them out. What we see in the data, we see about a doubling, doubling of the risk of breast cancer, doubling of a risk of prostate cancer, five times greater risk of colon cancer, seven times greater risk of endometrial cancer when we develop obesity. It's crazy. And so this is not about vanity. This is about a state of our biology, a state of our physiology, a state of human health that is subjecting us to all manner of disease and dysfunction. all manner of disease and dysfunction. So, I'd like the input of trying to remove the moralizing from this. It's what I learned from Max when I first spoke to him last year, and he reminded me that there are lots of different ways that people can get fat.

A good example of this, Robert Ploman, the guy that did the largest ever twin studies in the world. Every single pair of twins born between 1991 and 1994 in the UK was contacted about being enrolled in his study. He's the father of behavioral genetics. And he was talking to me and he was saying that he has the predisposition to be fat. And he said that when he walks past a bakery, some people aren't that bothered, but he smells bread and his grill in response just goes through the room. But it could also be that you don't really like exercise that much. And it could also be that you don't really enjoy eating foods that are a little bit leaner. And it could also be, you know, there's lots of

different ways to get the kai ko equation to work against you from an obesity perspective. And just because I come from, I have a background where I would be, like, 63 kilos if I'd never been to the gym, that's not the same disposition that everybody has. That being said, there is an awful lot of agency. Like ultimately, if you don't put it in your mouth, it doesn't go into your body, right? So finding this balance between empowerment and reminding people of the sovereignty and agency that they have over their health and fitness, whilst accepting that the base that people are working from is not the same, the difficulty. Some people are swimming upstream and some people are swimming downstream,

right? And I think again, from Max, I'd be interested to know if you agree with this, that as far as he's concerned, the current world that people find themselves in, if they want to eat foods that do not cause them to be obese, If they want to not eat beyond satiety, they are finding it harder to do now than ever before because of how ultra-process foods are hyper-palatable, they're more calorie dense, they're quicker and easier to put into your mouth and get into your stomach,

they're more readily available, you're able to graze throughout the day. All of the things, again, that get this kai ko equation, the balance to just lean more and more and more and more toward surplus calories. It's never been more difficult to be underweight, right? Or to be of a healthy way. Exactly. And also, even with all those things you just shared, we have this new category,

huge list of obesigents. So these are obesigins. Obesigins. Obesity causing agents that are affirmed in particular, they're riddled with obesigins in ultra-process foods. So it's similar to a carcinogen, a cancer causing agent, which, according to the WHO, for example, glyphosate, which has been on a lot of people's conversation list recently, glyphosate, according to the WHO.

Is that the long killer? The weed killer stuff? Yeah, yeah, Monsanto. And I'm from St. Louis, home baseate, according to the WHO. The long killer, the weed killer stuff. Yeah, yeah, Monsanto. And I'm from St. Louis, home base. I went to work there after college. And so glyphosate, according to the WHO, is classified as a class 2A carcinogen. That means that it probably causes cancer in humans.

That's why there's so much unrest about it, but this has been known for quite some time. And by the way, this is in the East Marta family cookbook too. Because what does this translate to? Am I really getting exposure? Well, the environmental working group took a bunch of the most common grain products on US door shelves and analyzed them for glyphosate content. They found 80 to 90 percent of conventional grain products were contaminated with glyphosate content. They found 80 to 90% of conventional grain products were contaminated with glyphosate, a probable human carcinogen. Again, carcinogens, obesity genes,

these are going to be things that are often found in significant content in ultra-process foods. Yeah, so the obesity gene thing is that just a component of food, which makes it more likely to be overeaten. These are synthetic chemicals that literally alter our metabolic function and contribute to the process of weight gain. Give us something on their own.

One of the most ominous sounding obesadins that we're all getting exposed to pretty much every day is bisphenol A. All right, so this is in food packaging. And so this is a plasticizing chemical. So plastics are made from fossil fuels and I see plastics every... I mean, you can't. So much of this is made from plastic. It's made our lives, you know, it's the material, you know, it's like the look, the feel of cotton, the fabric up, the look, the feel of plastic, the death, the killer of our lives. Sorry.

Plastics are awesome in their own right, but in regards to their interaction with our food is a serious problem. I just had a conversation with a board certified toxicologist who worked in the flavor and fragrance industry and she shared with me that you know even for example when we go to a coffee shop you know you get that to go cup and it's a paper cup. Why is that hot liquid not like melting the cup or like breaking the cup down?

Because the inside has a certain type of plastic. Oh, God. And the data now, she shared a study with me that you're consuming from any given cup of coffee, regular serving size of coffee, at least 25,000 microplastics, 25,000. And there's microplastics and there's nanoplastics. And she shared with me that these microplastics, again, bisphenol A is just one plasticizer chemical. There's bisphenol S. There's so many, but we can get tricked because it's health-washing

saying this is BPA-free. But she said that they can interact with our cells directly and function sometimes as like Xeno estrogen compounds. So activating estrogen pathways. This is why we see the correlation with breast cancer. We see the correlation with Gano-Mastia with breast tissue development with men. And so we've got that aspect, but she said the primary thing that's happening

we're seeing in the data is that it's contributing to inflammation. And so I'm saying all this to say, with our food supply, it isn't just the food itself, it's also what the shit is packaged in. Wow. So you're saying that even if I avoid the soy when I go to Starbucks, there's still other estrogens floating around in the thing that they give it to me in. And even with soy, again, soy's been utilized for thousands of years by humans. When you look at

the data and I used to again, because as soon as I heard Xeno estrogen with soy, I immediately put it on the do not disturb you. And the reality is the way that it functions in the body is not quite like we kind of create that superficial term of a zeno estrogen and like all these bad things messing up testosterone. That being said, traditionally people were not guzzling soy milk and eating soy dogs and having a tofurkey for, you know, Thanksgiving. I'm going to guess then that the storage of food, especially if someone, a lot of guys that are listening to this will be Jimbrose, they'll be doing their food prep perhaps on a Sunday

or perhaps each morning. They need to be looking very carefully at what it is that they're storing this food in, especially hot food, taking it from the plan into their Tupperware container. I blitzed all of mine and pivoted. They do this. So Tupperware do glass-based storage containers. So you can do that, but even that has a plastic lid. So I'm trying to find a solution now, if anyone knows one, of a all-glass storage container, would probably need to be a liter and a half, I think, a liter and a half to two liters seems about right.

Because you get some spinach and throw that on top and do all the way. You want room. But yeah, dude, for a decade, I thought that health was, and you know, stepping over dollars to pick up pennies, it's probably better to be eating good food that you've kept yourself that you know. And being like, oh, maybe there's some BPAs in this tupperware as opposed to, oh, well, I'll just go and continue to order on Uber Eats each day or whatever it might be.

But yeah, even if you're cooking your stuff at home, what are you storing that in once it's done? It's hot, it's going directly on the pan. Yes. Straight into, so what's your solution? You must prep food, your entire new cookbook is all about this. What's your solution? You're on the road. You want to make sure you're eating well How are you storing your food and taking it with you?

Yeah, I mean a simple thing if you don't want to throw all your plastics away by the way for your food storage Which I haven't we still have some stuff. We're cycling it out over time phased out, you know and you do at least let your food cool down because we do know that the heat interaction. So a recent, like this study was just published. And they, the researchers put food into a, quote, microwave safe plastic container in microwave to for three minutes. And they found that in a three centimeters space of that, of that container released literally 50,000 plus microplastics and we're talking millions of nanoplastics into the food.

And that's just from a three centimeter space of it. So just we're not heating our stuff up in the microwave in a three centimeter thing. It's large. It's a lot. So this is real. It's a thing. We don't want to be too neurotic, but if you large, there's a lot. So, this is real, it's a thing. We don't wanna be too neurotic, but if you can avoid it, avoid it.

Don't make hot food, don't put your hot food in there, I don't heat it up in there if you can. What do I do? I love stainless steel. Stainless steel containers for food with a silicon lid is great. Do you have any bronze the ease? You know, I did, I put some in the bonus resource guy

for the cookbook, and actually I talk about this in the cookbook, like food storage. Tell you. As well. Glass is great as well. These have been used traditionally glass for a long time for food storage. And...

Stan Effeding, vertical diet guy. His solution for his favorite meal, monster mash, is a thermos. So he gets a cylindrical thermos and like scoops his food in. And you get double benefit from that, that you can do it from hot. It'll go straight in. It will stay hot for, you know, 10 or 12 hours throughout the day. And it's just staying the steel all the way up. So that's a whole sum. That's a potential. You can also just, I guess, drink your food potentially. Although he does say, he did talk to me about how he gets some strange looks both going

through TSA when they say, a thermos, they presume that there's liquid in there and when they look more closely, it's beef and rice and other stuff. And then also that he's got a special long fork that he uses to get to the bottom of this thing. So if he is on a plane and he's like 260, 280 pounds, super jack dude, big bald head. And I can't imagine what it's like to sit next to him. You're already like this up against the window. And this massive guy pulls out a thermos and just starts hitting daddy long legs for. Yeah, yeah, it starts eating meat from it this, like special flight safe, super long fork.

Yeah. So that's a, I mean, people have kind of really got obsessive over the BPA stuff. And I'm always cautious, even though it's like, it's interesting and it's something that could be hiding in plain sight and it's an easy change. Like you use the storage that you have. So if you change the storage that you have,

it's now no longer a problem for you, right? So it's a single time decision that pays off downstream. But how big of a problem is this? Is this a penny or is this a dollar when we're looking at this from an obesity and perspective? I think it's in the middle tier. Got you, okay. 50 cent.

Yeah. Shout out to Curtis Jackson. Yeah. But because it's so pervasive, it's so pervasive, you know, in our food system. And nobody stopped to ask, is this a problem for humans? I didn't even think about the fact that the inner coating of disposable coffee cups would have this. So I'm going to guess that if someone that's listening is a big coffee

person and they enjoy their Starbucks or Coster or whatever it is that you would say, get yourself a good quality steel stainless steel lined thermos type coffee cup of some kind, take that and give it to them. They'll do all of the fancy stuff that you want, but do not be using the disposable cups if you can. Ideally, yes, if you can. Again, we don't want to be in here, this is a little interesting fun story,

I haven't shared this, but I was with my wife and we had like a little staycation. And usually, I bring my forcing matting and I make coffee in the room and they didn't have coffee mugs in the room at that moment. And I just, it was kind of, you know, it was a little bit of a time crunch. We had something to do.

And I was like, they only have these reusable paper, you know, the paper cups with the plastic lining. And I was telling my wife, like, babe, you know, they only have this, whatever. She was like, I don't care. Because she doesn't care. But when she listened to my guest, the board certified toxicologist,

shout out to Dr. Yvonne Burkhardt. My wife just happened to listen to that episode. My guess, the board certified toxic colleges, shout out to Dr. Yvonne Burkhardt. My wife just happened to listen to that episode. And she was talking to me every five minutes. I was in the other room just trying to do some mobility work, like relax, it was a long day. And she every five minutes, babe, did you know? Oh, the plastic, the paper cups, like you were right.

And because it came from somebody else. You know. So, dude, you and Max, it doesn't surprise me that you guys are friends. He was telling me that when his mum was still with us, that she wouldn't always listen to the advice that he gave her if he told her directly. But if he went on Dr. Oz and said it, she would be accepting of it as long as it was through a more like highly credentialed delivery mechanism, even it's still him, right?

It's still the sun. It's just not the sun on FaceTime or sat-ups at the dinner table. A lot of people deal with this. I talk with Tony Robbins not too long ago and he said that there's a statement. It's been said for a long time but he said it and it just like it really jumped out of me that you can't be a prophet in your own land sometimes. And so the proximity with people that know you sometimes especially if they change your diapers for example. It might not land

the same way. The medium is the message. Exactly, is if Dr. Augh said it. And so fortunately, I happened upon that insight when I was working with people, running in office, working as nutritionist, day in and day out, that a lot of times when people are wanting to again, make a change, if it's coming from that person and they're going back to their household, right? So they want this behavior, they want this result.

I'm giving them the science-backed behavior change to do it, then I'm sending them to a culture that's fighting against them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If they were to come in and just, they start spouting off the stuff, it would be a challenge. And so one of the things that happens so much

when people come up to me, a lot of times they'd be like, you know, my wife or my husband or my kids or, you know, my mother is always talking about you. And we've changed so much because Sean says it's like a thing in the household because it's that it's that external voice. Of course, back by science and also it's most of the stuff that we're talking about makes sense. It's really nice. How many guys do you think are going to listen to this today and say to their wife this

evening that they should have sex before they go to sleep and then finish it up with because Sean says, because Sean said the shirts, because Sean says, with the arrow pointing down. Let's go. I think we've moved, it's interesting we spoke about culture right at the very beginning. And this, again, we're trying to play this game if not moralizing, of bringing people along for the ride, of not, you know, pointing the finger and accusing people of stuff, and yet, there is a, like, making health normal again, seems like such an odd pivot. It would almost have to reverse this accounting for and acclimatizing for poor health outcomes, whether it be changing the size of plain seats

or whether it be all of the different changes that people are looking to do with menus, with accounting, all of this stuff, it's very strange to think about, okay, what would a set point healthy society look like? Krishnamurti said that it is no manner of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. My man, yes, yes. That's what we're experiencing right now.

It is normal to be unwell. We are living at a time, this is the first time in human history, where if you are healthy, you are not normal. And this is a fact. But our definition of normal, of course, is very complicated. We want to normalize health. We want to create a culture that makes it easy to be healthy.

And that's what's possible. I spent many years, again, I've been in this field for 21 years, trying to address the larger culture. And I've made a remarkable impact coming from somebody who, when I went to college, I lived in Ferguson, Missouri, a glorified food desert of the highest order. And I grew up, I had multiple chronic illnesses myself, chronic asthma, hospitalized every year.

I had an arthritic condition, an advanced arthritic condition, diagnosed when I was 20 years old. My spine was breaking down, I broke my hip at track practice. Like, that's crazy, that shouldn't happen to a child. To come from that, to write the firstly wellness-related book to become an international bestseller.

I think we've got maybe 25 foreign, separate foreign book deals. Like, it's crazy. It's like in libraries in China. You know, it's crazy. It's crazy. But that's what's possible. I have made a dent in the bigger, in the bigger culture escape.

But that is a tremendous task. It's heavy. It is life sucking and energy draining to do that. And it's very, it's very, very difficult. It is a like an, I get, I'm right now conjuring up an image of atlas. All right. Or siss this office maybe. Right, yeah, yes. Now, with that being said, let's address that. But let's first and foremost address,

I just had this great conversation with a man named Greg Hardin. And man, I'm so grateful to have met this man. He's really the first mentor in college for Tom Brady. Michael Phelps, Charles Woodson, the list goes on and on. He's like a super power for them. Meeting him changed the course of their last. Tom Brady was like fourth string when he met Greg.

What Greg said to me, and he said, when he said it, again, it hit different because we've heard this before, control the controllables, control the controllables control the controllables Tom was so concerned with trying to change things that he couldn't control what he could control was the way that he was training what he could control was taking advantage of the opportunities that he was giving no matter how small they were the starting quarterback was getting 20 reps, back up 10 reps, Tom was getting like two. He was like, make those two the greatest two human he's ever seen. He reframed it like that. He put some power back into his hands

for him to control the controllables. What do we do in this context with a larger culture scape that is unwell? Focus on your micro-culture. Intentionally create a micro-culture around you that makes health easy, that makes movement easy, that makes good sleep easy. Right now, again, stepping out our door, it's very difficult to control those things. But within under our own roof, and by the way, I want to make this clear, we are products of our environment. We can't help it. We are influenced by the things in our

environment all the time. But humans are also creators of our environment. We can create an environment intentionally. That's what makes us so remarkable. We can create an intentional environment that makes this stuff easy. With that said, the environment starts with us. The culture starts with us. We are representation of our culture. Got to shout out Gandhi in this one, did be the change. Like people say that shit like seriously.

We want everything else to change outside of us. The truth is, it's an inside job first and foremost because here's the cool thing. When you take yourself like you're from across the pond. When you come here though, your representation of your culture, you can't help it. It's beaming off of you. The swiveness, the accent, all the things, it's just coming off. Please, come on.

All right. When we show up anywhere, we bring our culture with us. It's infectious. We have this, we attribute contagious things to just negative things, but wellness is contagious as well. And we've got data affirming that too. The Framingham Heart Study, for example.

And so, let's focus on creating a micro-culture in our household. What does that look like? I shared, for me, the core of that, which is community, family and friends, because it's the biggest leverage point. It feeds into itself. When you can focus on creating healthy relationships, especially in close proximity to you, which is something we're never, we're not taught about how to have good relationships,

which is the most impactful thing on our lives. We go to school and we learn about like, I don't say, times tables or whatever, you know, like that's cool, that's cool, but that's not gonna to impact my life more than how do I learn how to be a good listener? How do I become a person of value so that people want me in their relationship, right? So for me, it's focusing on controlling the controllables, be the type of person of value who can have great relationships.

That's part of listening to this right now. What you've created is helping us to be better people. So investing in that, you're already winning. You're already starting the process and building on that process. Also, in your own micro-culture with your food, know thyself. If you can't have cheetos in the crib

without having orange fingers, definitely don't bring them in. And we don't have to villainize snickers. If we want to, if we want to dabble in that, I got snicker bites in the cookbook, higher quality ingredients, real food ingredients. We've got, I mentioned the cherry frozen yogurt pops. If you want a sweet frozen treat, right? Let's upgrade food ingredients. We've got, I mentioned the cherry frozen yogurt pops. If you want a sweet frozen treat, right?

Let's upgrade the ingredients. We know our culture, we like that stuff. We like popsicles, you know, we like burgers. We like chocolate. Let's just, okay, that's cool, because the processed food industry are the ones that really fucked it up for us. All right.

Humans we innately are driven to eat things that taste good to us. I know the top guys in all the different diaphragm works. One of my guys is the eat to live, don't live to eat guy. I couldn't be any further from my perspective on that, not based on like that doesn't sound good, but because of biology, we have this really immaculate, intelligent, flavor receptor system that's the human nose and our palate, the interface there is so cool,

we can taste things that are just mind blowing with the like Gary Vee and the fucking wines. Like it's a hint of like a hot wheels car and dirt. Like they're all of these subtle flavor notes that we can identify and that helped us to survive because we can taste whether or not that food was good for us. And there's this phenomenon called post-injustive feedback. Have you heard of this before?

No. Post-injustive feedback is essentially whenever we, through our evolution and today, if we were to eat a food, our cells, our biology, would take notes essentially on what it just got from that food. And flavor is the language, it's like the label. It's a flavor label. So, for example, the cherries that I talked about earlier,

we eat the food, okay, we get some bioavailable melatonin, we get these antioxidants, we get these particular amino acids, we get this vitamin C, your biologist taking notes. That flavor is attached to those nutrients. So when I become deficient in those nutrients, I'll develop a craving for that flavor. That's how we're hardwired. Food scientists have fucked that whole thing up.

One of the inventions of gas chromatograph can isolate flavors based on the chemistry. Like this cherry flavor, here's the chemistry to make it. Now we can take that flavor and add it to ice cream. We can add it to soda, we can add it to candy, we can add it to all this shit that is not cherries. And so it muddies up these metabolic waters. I learned today about Mountain dew flavored hot dogs. Yeah.

Frankenstein is here. Walking around. Walking around. It's a form of a weiner. All right. It's real. It's real. This is where we are today,

where our biology doesn't even understand or recognize real food anymore. So we've got to take back control because the lie is that that shit tastes better than real food. That's not even close. Our most memorable meals are often times the ones that are prepared by somebody that loves us and they're made from real food. They're quote, made from scratch. Real food meals.

We don't often have very like super memorable moments with a bag of cool ranch Doritos. Speak to yourself. Okay, shout out to Jay Leno, who was in the first commercial for that. That shit was good, all right. And with that being said, you know, we're talking about here is my guy,

Mark Schatzker, you know, in the Dorito effect. And looking at again, being able to take the flavor of a taco and putting it on a chip. But now you're not getting the potential veggies, the grass fed meat, the whatever else might have been in the real conversation with the guy in the food truck that made it. There you go. We're missing out. We just go right straight to hand in the bag. Mm-hmm. You're jacking that bag off. Yeah. All right. Again, speak for yourself. All right, so here's the bottom line. We want to take back control of our palate. And to do that, food isn't just food, it's information.

When you're bringing in more of these real foods in ways that are, delicious should be a no-brainer, but in ways that are fun, that create incredible like food, memories, and experiences like taking the salmon and having a delicious salmon burger. Right? Now, we're getting in all that vital data from those foods.

It's changing what's happening with our genes. We normalize that in our environment because instead of whatever the fuck else we were gonna have as far as a burger was concerned. Now we've got this, I made a batch of them, got them in the freezer for whenever I want. Like we start to create an environment again that makes it easy to make healthy choices.

So know thyself, if you can have some cheetos at the crib and not go ham on them when you're stressed, that's cool. For most people, don't bring that shit in anymore. But treat yourself, treat yourself good. Make sure, if you're a sweetie pie, like my wife. She's a sweetie. She loves sweets Knowing that We make sure that we keep a stash the good stuff for her if she ever has that inclination

That she wants some you know some chocolate whoever we got a higher quality chocolate bar in there We've got a you know a higher quality. You know the snicker bites. We've got this super food, a chocolate bark. You know, we've got all these different things that she can have to address that desire. So focus on the micro-culture. Talia, Sean Stevenson, ladies and gentlemen, Sean, I really appreciate you, man. Why should people go?

You got brand new book out, you got loads of other stuff going on. Why should they go? Yeah, so the book just came out. I'm so grateful this week. And as of this recording, and it's available nationwide at bookstores, and of course at Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, all that good stuff. I actually just saw today that because the book was number one cookbook in the

US on Amazon, they dropped the price. So it's 50% off right now on Amazon for people if they pop over to Amazon. Thank you Mr. Bezos. Yes, you're welcome. And so it's the each smarter family cookbook. As I mentioned, there's over 250 scientific references in this cookbook. And most importantly though, we identified about 40 of the most science-back foods for improving metabolic health, see quality, the list goes on and on, and how to make delicious foods with them, delicious meals with them. So you pick up these smart family cookbook

invest in your family and your health, great gift to give as well. And people can find me where they're watching or listening to this. My show's called The Model Health Show. And I'm grateful to say it's been the number one health podcast in the country many, many times. And we do master classes there on every subject matter.

You can imagine myself. And I bring on the very best people in their respective fields as well. And it's just a special place. And it's all free, you know, just click play and you're going to get something special. Time right, Sean. I appreciate you. Thank you, man. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm fed